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Paul Tsui

There are oh-so-many things I would like to talk about today’s artist, Paul Tsui. It is so rare, in my infinite googling powers , that I find a lot of new stuff. New artists, new pieces, yeah yeah – but new styles and application that actually get me excited are pretty hard to find. Now, Paul hasn’t obviously reinvented the wheel here – but when you look at his whole body of work you can really tell there is some different kind of decision making here. I would put his work on the same list I would put other modern day ‘masters’ – his brush work and textures work flawlessly with the immaculate colors that display a scene so perfectly well, both with mood and real atmospheric properties.

So, that was the first thing.

Secondly, I am going to embarrass him (because of course EVERY artist I feature is aware I talk about them), by posting an image he posted back in 2008:

Note: This is NOT bad! I’ve seen a lot of great student’s work that wished it looked like this. But, that is what it looks like: a student. Someone who is still figuring things out. One of the great things about some of the images above is the confidence in the work, how easy he makes it look. My first impression is that the colors are much different – you can tell the artist is thinking ‘OK – brown dress. Yellow hair. Light shirt. Blue pants. Dark foreground, lighter background….’ These things are all correct, but the fact you can see him thinking ruins a part of the illusion. Going back to his images above look at how honest the images appear. Do you think he made these changes instantaneously?

With the internet these days, with introduction to new and ‘better’ websites, it isn’t so often we can look 5+ years back on an artists learning curve like this and see how he/she has improved and through what artistic decisions. I just want to remind all the readers out there (there has to be like, what, 9 of you now?) that practice really does make perfect. Sometimes it will take 5 years, sometimes 1, sometimes 20. But all great artists have one thing in common: They didn’t stop.